Building the barricade

Poetry. Translated from the Polish by Piotr Florczyk. "'War made me another person,' said AnnaŚwirszczyńska. BUILDING THE BARRICADE is the outcome of that change in that it took thirty years for these experiences to find their way into language. But the poem is also, undoubtedly, an agent of change, for us well as her. Stanza by stanza we see the speaker transformed, stripped of anything but the terrible truths she is recording."—Eavan Boland